Little White Lies (32 page)

‘And what we gonna eat while you
think it through
?’ Lyudmila’s tone was derisive. She took a long, deep slug of her drink.

Tash sighed. ‘Ma, it’s my life, okay? I couldn’t take it anymore, that’s all. She was driving me crazy.’

‘Yes, is your life,’ Lyudmila muttered dourly. She took another slug and turned to Tash. There was real fear in her eyes. ‘You better get new job,’ Lyudmila said calmly but her hands betrayed her. They were shaking as she gripped her glass. ‘You better find job today.’

Tash turned away. The bravado that had swept over her that morning had completely drained away. Something flowed over her now – a memory so faint and fleeting she had difficulty grabbing hold of it. She’d been walking with her mother somewhere . . . somewhere in the well-heeled streets around them, holding onto Lyudmila’s hand, looking up and straight into those elegant, first-floor living rooms whose windows were always wide open, inviting glances and sometimes frank, open stares. There was one – on Onslow Gardens, not far from them – she remembered it still. A white stuccoed and porticoed house. The wooden shutters were peeled back and a woman stood in the window, framed by an enormous glass bowl of lilies on one side and a plant of some description on the other. She’d watched Lyudmila and Tash walk slowly past, Tash turning her head as she went by, looking longingly past the woman to the richly decorated room beyond. Lyudmila had stopped to light a cigarette or something; Tash stood patiently beside her, her hand tucked into the crook of Lyudmila’s elbow. She smiled at the woman in the window. There was something so warm and friendly and inviting about her, though she couldn’t have said what. How old was she? Five? Six? Suddenly the woman’s hand went up in a wave. She leant down quickly and drew up the window. She was wearing a pale pink cardigan and Tash remembered it slipped off her bare, tanned shoulders. ‘Wait,’ the woman called out to them. ‘Wait a moment.’

Lyudmila’s hand, on its way to her mouth with her lit cigarette, paused. She looked down at Tash in surprise. ‘
Vy znaete, etu zhenshchinu
? Do you know that woman?’

‘
Nyet
,’ Tash whispered. Something was going to happen; she could feel her skin begin to prickle uncomfortably.

The woman came running down the short flight of steps. She was holding something in her hand. A plate. A plate of scones, or biscuits. What happened next was still confusing, even after all those years. There was an exchange of words, a shout, and then Lyudmila’s hand flew up. The scones flew into the air, tumbling and breaking apart as they hit the ground. There was a lot of shouting, mostly by Lyudmila . . . Tash looked at the ground. Lyudmila grabbed her by the arm, so hard that it hurt, and, hurling abuse at the woman in Russian, dragged her away. At the last minute, Tash turned her head to look back. The woman was kneeling on the ground, picking up the pieces of the broken plate. She got up stiffly and the last thing Tash saw was her elegant heels, scuffling quickly from side to side, pushing the small, fluffy pieces of scone that had fallen, to one side, under the hedge, out of sight.

Charity. That was the last time she’d seen fear on Lyudmila’s face. She saw it now. She picked up her bag and quickly left the flat.

ANNICK
Paris

‘
Bonsoir
.’ She looked up from her book. A man was standing in front of her, wearing a suit, unusual in the hotel’s run-of-the-mill clientele.

‘
Bonsoir
,’ she said dully. ‘Rates are on the board behind me.’

There was some sort of commotion in the far corner of the lobby where there was a bench and a small coffee table, though neither was ever used. She glanced past him to a couple seated on the bench, so close the girl was practically in the man’s lap. A big man, with a broad, fleshy chest and a dark, shiny face. The girl had on a red wig and a skirt so short it barely covered her backside. ‘What’s your best room?’ asked the suited man in front of her. Annick dragged her eyes back to him.

‘The best?’ It wasn’t a question she was often asked. ‘Well, the rooms on the third floor all have en suite bathrooms. I could give you one of those. They’re a bit more expensive, though.’

He glanced at the board behind her head and peeled off a large wad of notes. ‘Three . . . four . . . five. There. That should cover it.’ She looked past him again. The big man was angled away from her; she could only see the back of his head and the broad expanse of his shoulders, tightly encased in a dark blue blazer. Fascinatedly, she watched as the girl lazily tickled the rolls of fat around his neck with long, pink-painted fingernails.

‘Cover it?’ she repeated, confused. He’d put down five hundred euros in neat, clean notes on the countertop in front of her.

‘Yes. We’ll take all four rooms on the third floor. Please don’t allow anyone up. Not whilst he’s there.’ He jerked his head backwards, indicating the man and his painted, child-like companion. ‘I’m assuming there’s no one there just now?’ He looked past her to the rows of keys.

She nodded, and then shook her head. She was confused. His French was flawless, his manner impeccably polite – he definitely wasn’t the sort of customer she met on a daily basis. ‘No, yes . . . no, I mean. There’s no one there.’ She quickly reached behind her and pulled off all four sets of keys, laying them out in front of her.

‘We’ll take this one.’ He picked up the key to Room 313 and turned. ‘Sir,’ he called out. ‘It’s ready.’ The girl turned her head slowly, flickered a lizard-like glance over him, and then turned it back slowly. Annick watched, fascinated, as she licked the big man’s tiny ear, whispering something to him, and threw her head back, laughing, laughing. The sound of laughter was incongruous in the darkened lobby.

‘I’m busy, can’t you see?’ the big man laughed, a deep, sonorous rumbling that fought its way out of his stomach. Finally he lumbered to his feet, pulling the girl along with him. The girl carefully put her high-heeled feet down, one in front of the other. The man followed her, his eyes glued to her small, high backside, gazing blankly in the way men looked at women they’d paid for, no thought at all in their faces other than the thought of what lay ahead. The lift doors closed and suddenly, abruptly, there was silence in the lobby.

‘I’ll just take a seat over there.’ The suited man pulled a book out of his jacket pocket and walked to the bench his boss had just evacuated.

Annick nodded but didn’t say anything. After working at the front desk for so long, nothing shocked her anymore; she’d seen it all. Although, she thought to herself quickly as the man sat down and flipped open his book, she’d never seen a bodyguard who read Jean Genet.
Journal du Voleur
. Her eyes widened. She’d read it once, a long time ago. She looked down at her own book. It was a cheap American thriller of the sort she’d never even glanced at until she started working at the hotel. Those books passed the night like no other – page after page, murder after murder, clue after clue . . . all the way to happy-ever-after. It was a lie, of course. There was no happy-ever-after. Only in cheap American thrillers.

‘It’s good?’

His voice startled her. She hadn’t even heard him get up. She made a quick gesture with her hand as though to hide it from him. ‘Er, yes. No, not really. It . . . it passes the time.’

He looked at her curiously for a moment but before she could say anything, his mobile rang. He turned away momentarily. There was a hurried conversation in a language she couldn’t quite catch, then he shoved it back in his pocket. He turned back to her, gesturing towards the lift. ‘Does it work?’ He seemed in a hurry. She looked up. It was stuck on the fourth floor, a common occurrence.

‘It’s stuck,’ she said, lifting her shoulders. ‘It happens every night.’

He looked at it; then, with a sound that she hadn’t heard in a long time, he sucked his teeth together, a sound of impatience, irritation . . . a sound only Africans or West Indians make. Her father used to make that very same sound, she thought to herself in surprise. She looked up but he’d already pushed open the fire-escape door. He disappeared; she could hear him running up the stairs. She stared at the empty, swinging door. Unexpected tears prickled behind her eyes. Who was he? It made no difference. It was unlikely she’d ever see him again.

But she did. ‘
Bonsoir
.’ She looked up. A red, watery light from the neon sign opposite lit the interior of the lobby.

‘Oh, it’s you.’ She felt her face grow warm. Other than the few people she worked with, she rarely spoke to anyone.

He smiled, his white, even teeth startling in the dark, smooth face. ‘
Oh, it’s you
,’ he mimicked, but teasingly, not unkindly. ‘It’s Yves, actually. What’s your name?’

She was so taken aback she had no idea what to say. ‘I . . . my name? An . . . Annick,’ she stammered.

‘Nice to meet you, Annick,’ he said, still smiling. He held out a hand. There was a moment’s awkward confusion, then she took it. His grip was warm and firm. ‘How long have you been working here, Annick?’ he asked pleasantly.

The question threw her. They’d barely spoken three words to each other but it was already more than she could handle. ‘I . . . we . . . we’re not really supposed to talk to guests,’ she said finally. She didn’t know how else to end the conversation. She just wasn’t used to making conversation with anyone, let alone a handsome stranger. And he was handsome, she’d noticed.

‘I’m hardly a guest. But it’s fine.’ He held up his hands in mock defeat. ‘If you’d rather I left you alone . . . ?’

‘I . . . it’s not that. It’s just . . . where’s your boss?’ she asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

‘He stopped off en route,’ he smiled. ‘He’ll be here soon enough.’

‘Who is he?’

He looked away. ‘Just a businessman. No one you’d know.’

‘Are you his bodyguard?’

He smiled. ‘Sometimes. Most of the time I’m a student.’

‘A student?’ She couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice. He looked too old to be a student.

‘A late bloomer,’ he grinned, reading her mind. ‘No, actually, I’m doing my doctorate. It’s just taken longer than I thought.’

‘Oh. What are you studying?’

He grinned at her as if to say,
But I thought you weren’t encouraged to talk to guests?
‘Engineering.’

‘An engineer who reads Genet?’ She couldn’t help herself.

‘Engineers read all sorts of things,’ he said mildly. ‘Even American thrillers.’

She blushed and looked down at her hands. She who had once been the class flirt couldn’t handle a simple conversation. ‘Well, I’d . . . I’d better get back to work,’ she said eventually.

He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He put down the money – in cash again – and picked up the keys to Room 313. He gave her a quick two-fingers-pressed-against-his-temple salute and walked back to his bench. A second later, his mobile rang. His boss was clearly on his way. A few minutes later, a second bodyguard pushed open the door and shadowed him in. As ever, he was accompanied by a young, heavily made-up girl whose arms were entwined around his thick fleshy neck as he lumbered into the lift. Annick watched the doors close slowly behind them. The girl was busy pressing herself against his bulk; he paid no more attention to her than he would a buzzing fly.

Less than an hour later, they were gone.

The rest of the night passed without incident. Customers straggled in and out: men in cheap, badly fitting suits, girls – young, old, haggard, innocent-looking – trotting obediently after them. She’d seen it all before. Occasionally, one of the people who more or less lived in the hotel permanently came in, smiled at her briefly and disappeared. Why would anyone choose to live here? she often thought to herself. There was one elderly woman who’d been at the hotel for almost a year, with whom Annick felt a strange, secret affinity. She’d given her name as Madame C. D. de Férrier-Messrine, and although it was true there was something faintly aristocratic about her bearing and her speech, it was clear that she’d fallen on hard times. Annick knew from the gossip she overheard when the cleaners exchanged shifts that the woman practised a frugality that would have made the social services cry ‘famine!’. She ate nothing but boiled rice. The chambermaids brought back the empty packets without a word. She was very thin, always dressed in black with one ornate piece of jewellery, a gold bracelet that hung off her bird-like arm, coins and medallions clanking every time she moved. She always said a polite, gravelly ‘good morning’ to Annick when she came upon her early in the morning. Where did she go, Annick wondered, at seven a.m? Once or twice she’d caught Annick coming out of the bakery opposite, her arms full of crusty batons of freshly baked bread and sometimes a bag of croissants, still oozing butter through their paper skin. They’d flashed each other a quick, guilty look of complicity but nothing was ever said. They both harboured secrets; that was enough.

At seven on the dot, she picked up her book, bag and coat and got ready to leave. Wasis, a sour-looking, taciturn man from Chad or Mali or Burkina Faso, depending on who was asking, took over. ‘
Tout va bien
?’ he asked in his gruff, staccato French.

She shook her head. ‘No, no problems.’

‘
D’accord. Bonne journée
.’

‘
Toi aussi
,’ Annick replied automatically and pushed open the door. It was cold outside; a nippy, chilly wind blew around her ears and ankles, the only parts of her that were exposed. She pulled her scarf up more firmly, settling her neck into her collar and shoving her hands in her pockets. She had no gloves; maybe next month. Her salary covered the absolute basics – rent, bills, food – and precious little else. She walked to and from work every day to save on transport and once a month she took the train to visit her aunt. That was it. She’d never had the dubious advantage of knowing how to live on very little. Most of her life had been spent cossetted in the kind of luxury that seemed unending. Not once had she even had to worry or even enquire about the price of food, the cost of transport, or the tariffs on gas. She’d never owed anyone money, or asked for an advance against earnings to come. In Paris, she’d learned quickly. She had to. After those first few months, she wised up. She took her weekly pay, deducted her rent and bills and put the remainder in one of the kitchen drawers. Everything came out of that drawer – food, the odd bus ticket, the odd book, a scarf, and even, once, a lipstick . . . not that she had any use for it. She’d seen the shade in the window of one of the small pharmacies that lined her route to work.
Rouge Allure. Impertinente. Chanel
. She stopped and put a hand to her mouth. Her mother had worn the very same shade. Annick lost count of the number of sleek, shiny black tubes she’d pilfered from the bathrooms in the Paris apartment, or the enormous, marble-floored bathroom at the palace in Lomé. Where were all those tubes now? She pushed open the door, hearing the familiar, two-tone chime coming at her as if from a great, great distance and handed over the last few euros in her purse.